I don’t like to make non-substantive posts such as this one. But the comments in the previous article are getting a bit unwieldy, so I’ll leave this up as a placeholder for anyone spending their Saturday night watching C-SPAN. The U.S. House is debating health care tonight and is expected to pass it. A previous 538 analysis had forecast that a bill much like the one under debate tonight would get about 222 votes. It looks like Pelosi may do a bit better than that, thanks to a sort of Faustian bargain on abortion. On the other hand, if she has votes to spare, she may will release some of her more vulnerable members, so anything from the bare minimum of 218 up to the mid 230s seems possible.

UPDATE: (12:54 AM) The bill passes, 220-215; roll call can be found here. Our original projection wound up being really good — we’d projected 220 Democratic and 2 Republican yeas; in fact there was 219 Democratic and 1 Republican yea. Although, for a variety of reasons, this was a relatively easy projection to make.

Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight. @natesilver538

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